Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas monopoly, accused Ukraine of acting “like a barbarian” in its deepening dispute with Moscow over gas supplies.

In an exclusive interview with The Times, Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom’s deputy chief executive, claimed that Ukraine had stolen Russian gas by independently shutting down three key export pipelines that supplied Russian gas to more than 110 million people across the Balkans, Turkey and southeastern Europe.

“What is happening has no precedent,” Mr Medvedev said. “Ukraine is taking gas that is destined for Europe . . . This is a situation where a country that in the West was wrongly associated with democratic rights is behaving like a barbarian.”

Mr Medvedev, who was in London to meet British officials and to hold an international press conference, rejected claims that Russia shared the blame for shortages that led to supply cuts across much of Eastern and Southern Europe.

He claimed that Gazprom and its European customers were being “held hostage” by Kiev’s decision to turn off transit pipelines and called for “stolen gas to be returned” immediately.

He tried hard to portray the dispute as a purely commercial disagreement and he dismissed the suggestion that Russia’s position was being directed by the Kremlin.

He claimed that comments yesterday from Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, ordering Gazprom to cut volumes pumped through Ukraine in retaliation for alleged thefts of gas had been misrepresented in the Western press.

Mr Putin, he said, had simply been indicating his agreement with earlier remarks made by Alexei Miller, the Gazprom chief executive.

Ukraine, which has had poor relations with Moscow since the Orange Revolution in 2005, has strongly denied all allegations of theft. It has said that Moscow is to blame for the row, which began after talks broke up just hours before a New Year’s Eve deadline, prompting Gazprom to suspend deliveries to Ukraine’s domestic market.

Gazprom, which claims that Kiev owes billions of dollars in unpaid bills and late fees, has been gradually seeking to raise the prices that Ukraine pays for gas.

Mr Medvedev, who met The Times before flying to Germany, sought to reassure British customers that they would be unaffected by the crisis and said that on Monday he had talks with Mike O’Brien, Britain’s Minister for Energy. “We feel that it is important for decision-makers to have good information about what is going on,” he said.

To help to resolve future problems he called for the creation of a “new international institution” to arbitrate in similar disputes. “What we are missing is an international instrument that could prevent or help resolve such disputes,” he said.

Mr Medvedev said that this had been proposed by Russia at a meeting of the G8 leaders in St Petersburg in 2006 but that the idea had not progressed any farther.

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